Creating a community around my research book

Question

I have written a research book on the topic of abstract pure mathematics. Now the book is in review with a scientific publisher.

In the book there are some conjectures formulated by myself. There are also some conjectures and problems at my site, which are not in the book.

I want to create a community of mathematicians around my book to solve questions I formulated and related issues.

Any advice to help build the community? Maybe should I ask the publisher to place a prominent URL of my site on the topic of the book on the book cover. (The URL is already present in the text of my book, but it may probably be more prominent if placed on the cover.)

I also think that it may be worth to redesign my Web page on the topic of the book to make it "problem oriented" (to place unsolved problems at the top of my page instead of the bottom as it is now). Well, on the other side serious researchers should anyway read my entire page and all links on it. What do you think?

Any other advice?

And a note: I am not a math professional, I am an amateur. (This means that I earn money in some other way than from my knowledge of mathematics.)

Answer 1

Instead of getting the community to approach you, I suggest that you be the one to approach the community. As an amateur (one who is outside the academic mathematical community), you are at a big disadvantage.

I recommend that you attend conferences and interact with others who are doing work similar to yours. In my opinion, the best way to get attention is to present papers in good conferences and to publish papers in respectable journals. By doing this, your reputation will improve and your work will be better known.

Answer 2

I very much doubt that this idea will work. Research mathematics already has its communities: conferences and workshops. New conferences and workshops pop up all the time but they do it because a group of mathematicians say, "Hey, we keep meeting and talking about Topic X and there are lots of other people who'd be interested. Why don't we run a workshop on that?" The communities form because a group of mathematicians has a common interest, not because somebody stands up and says, "Hey! I have this really interesting problem! Everybody come work on it with me!"

The venue for announcing "Hey! I have this really interesting problem!" is a pre-existing conference, as Joel explains in his answer. If people find it interesting, they'll start to work on it. If enough people start to work on it, they might start to organize workshops.

Answer 3

This really depends on what your ultimate goals are. If, as the tag of 'self-promotion' would suggest, you are after increased publicity of your book and self promotion of your website, I think you are likely to have a tough job creating your own community of interested parties from scratch. Certainly, making your website links highly prominent in your book would be a key start. Making links throughout the book relating to problems you have posed in the book would also be useful (but perhaps not so practical now if the book is in review). If you intend your community to be focused around your website, then yes, you should redesign it and separate it from your other web interests (minor links are ok).

If you would like to be involved with a mathematical community in order to help solve worthwhile, interesting and stimulating mathematical problems posed by you, you might want to consider presenting your questions at Mathematics Stack Exchange, just as you have already done.